When my brothers and I were kids, we were convinced the basement was haunted. We also saw on TV that garlic keeps away vampires. Following this logic, we thought 1) vampires are basically ghosts, and 2) onions are basically garlic. So we proceeded to hid onions throughout our parents basement and not tell anyone. Now this wasn't a small basement either - it was a very large, fully finished basement with a home theatre, computer room, wine room, cold cellar, "play room", and washroom.
Well we forgot about those onions almost as quick as we laid them out. Days, weeks, and months went by and the basement started to smell, more and more as time went on. No one knew what it was. Now we hid these onions well - dropped one in the wall near the fuse box, up under a couch (not down under the cushions, but up the other way), under the stairs in the storage room, etc. No one could pinpoint where this smell was coming from. It wasn't constant either, it would come when someone walked by quickly creating a draft, or when the AC kicked in. My Dad changed the AC filters, but that did nothing. We picked up the mess in the basement, emptied all the garbages, and vacuumed the floors (a typically "deep" clean), but the smell just got worse and worse. Eventually my parents hired professional cleaners to come do the carpets to clear everything up.
Sure enough, all that effort did nothing. By now the basement just wreaked of a mix of heavily fragranced soap, chemical cleaners, and a thick, putrid, musky smell of rotting. It was enough to make you gag. My parents stopped going down there completely unless absolutely necessary, and my brothers and I only played down there if we wanted the big toys that couldn't be brought up.
Then one day, after about 6 months of flat out avoiding the basement, I went down stairs to get a blanket to bring up. It was stuck in part of the couch and I had to reach up under it to get it loose so it wouldn't rip. It was there that I found a clump of black goo, slightly larger than my fist, with flakes of light brown onion skin. It instantly came rushing back to me what we did and what the smell was all this time. I grabbed an empty grocery bag and scrambled through the basement picking up all of what was left of the onions we had hid. I tied the bag up as tightly and in as many knots as I could manage and stuffed it deep in the garbage bin to hide the evidence.
The smell never came back, and I've never, ever told anyone this story. My parents still have no idea what it was. But it was by far, the absolute worst thing I have ever smelt.
When my brothers and I were kids, we were convinced the basement was haunted. We also saw on TV that garlic keeps away vampires. Following this logic, we thought 1) vampires are basically ghosts, and 2) onions are basically garlic. So we proceeded to hid onions throughout our parents basement and not tell anyone. Now this wasn't a small basement either - it was a very large, fully finished basement with a home theatre, computer room, wine room, cold cellar, "play room", and washroom.
Well we forgot about those onions almost as quick as we laid them out. Days, weeks, and months went by and the basement started to smell, more and more as time went on. No one knew what it was. Now we hid these onions well - dropped one in the wall near the fuse box, up under a couch (not down under the cushions, but up the other way), under the stairs in the storage room, etc. No one could pinpoint where this smell was coming from. It wasn't constant either, it would come when someone walked by quickly creating a draft, or when the AC kicked in. My Dad changed the AC filters, but that did nothing. We picked up the mess in the basement, emptied all the garbages, and vacuumed the floors (a typically "deep" clean), but the smell just got worse and worse. Eventually my parents hired professional cleaners to come do the carpets to clear everything up.
Sure enough, all that effort did nothing. By now the basement just wreaked of a mix of heavily fragranced soap, chemical cleaners, and a thick, putrid, musky smell of rotting. It was enough to make you gag. My parents stopped going down there completely unless absolutely necessary, and my brothers and I only played down there if we wanted the big toys that couldn't be brought up.
Then one day, after about 6 months of flat out avoiding the basement, I went down stairs to get a blanket to bring up. It was stuck in part of the couch and I had to reach up under it to get it loose so it wouldn't rip. It was there that I found a clump of black goo, slightly larger than my fist, with flakes of light brown onion skin. It instantly came rushing back to me what we did and what the smell was all this time. I grabbed an empty grocery bag and scrambled through the basement picking up all of what was left of the onions we had hid. I tied the bag up as tightly and in as many knots as I could manage and stuffed it deep in the garbage bin to hide the evidence.
The smell never came back, and I've never, ever told anyone this story. My parents still have no idea what it was. But it was by far, the absolute worst thing I have ever smelt.